狐狸视频 City SC聽Sporting Director Lutz Pfannenstiel talks to members of the press about Coach Bradley Carnell's extension at Citypark Stadium in 狐狸视频 on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. Video by Vanessa Abbitt, vabbitt@post-dispatch.com
Congratulations to 狐狸视频 City SC and head coach Bradley Carnell.
Pro sports teams often do dumb things, so it鈥檚 proper to compliment examples of the opposite when they occur.
Signing Carnell to a contract extension through 2025 after a historically impressive expansion debut was a great call. Obvious, sure. But some teams ignore the obvious.
This keeps City SC鈥檚 good vibes rolling in the right direction and keeps, at least for now, potential coach poachers pushed out of the picture. That鈥檚 the thing about this soccer scene. Poachers are all over the globe. What Carnell did last season made international ripples. There could come a time when he鈥檚 too hard to keep. Hopefully this delays that.
The news should also allow us to have a fair and sensible conversation about the single box Carnell left unchecked in his overwhelmingly positive debut. It鈥檚 the one he and sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel will need to solve if exhilarating expansion success can transition to City SC becoming a sustained MLS threat. Starting with this fast-approaching second season, it now seems right to start tilting importance from how City SC鈥檚 remarkable start wowed to how future editions of this team finish.
Last season, Carnell impressively took a roster of strangers and turned it into a team that showed a collective buy-in that stirred jealousy in the most established clubs. Everything from City SC鈥檚 talent, depth, style of play and, yes, even coaching was questioned by the so-called soccer experts entering the season, and all of those critics were proven wrong as the team shattered multiple records for an expansion team while finishing atop the Western Conference. It wasn鈥檛 just one of the best expansion stories in MLS history. It was one of the better in the history of American professional sports. That鈥檚 not hyperbole.
Neither is just being honest about the way it ended.
Remember what we said about ignoring the obvious?
City SC鈥檚 postseason was a fizzle, a flop. Getting shoved out immediately by rival Sporting Kansas City was so abrupt and disappointing I think some at CityPark sought to quickly zoom out for the rosier view of the whole season instead of putting the bitter end beneath the microscope. That included Carnell.
Externally, it worked. The regular-season success of the team was so surprising it felt a bit silly to go bananas about the first-round exit. People thought I was crazy for suggesting the team could make the playoffs, remember.
But hopefully the internal process was more thorough, because examining what went wrong and why can lead to a decreased chance it happens again. A team that talked the talk and walked the walk about not stopping to smell the roses got caught sleeping in the garden at the worst time. It happened on Carnell鈥檚 watch, just as all of the good things he earned beforehand did as well.
Carnell didn鈥檛 need to put on a big public display of anguish about how things ended. He did need to take what he learned and put his team in a better position to avoid it next time. I don鈥檛 question his ability to do just that.
This isn鈥檛 a prediction, but it鈥檚 not unprecedented for a team to win MLS Cup in its second season. Atlanta United did it in 2018, after a first-round exit as an expansion team the season before. Maybe that鈥檚 asking too much. What seems plenty reasonable is wanting to see City SC back in the bracket and better prepared for its brutality this time around. That would be another big step.
Those of us not as familiar with the rhythms of professional soccer as others before 狐狸视频 had a team to call its own have been adjusting pretty well, I think, to this new landscape.
We鈥檝e come to grips with the reality that, in this league, losing one of your best performers to a different league, like a Nicholas Gioacchini recently heading to Italy, is a good thing if the return makes it so. City SC got a great value on its initial investment. How that money gets used should pay dividends down the line.
We鈥檝e embraced, or at least tried to embrace, a season schedule that operates in starts and stops, sprinkling in-season domestic and international tournaments throughout. It鈥檚 strange, but it鈥檚 how soccer works. It鈥檒l grow on us. Especially if City SC makes a run in one of the in-season events.
What should never be suggested to the 狐狸视频 sports fan, though, is the acceptance of a notion that success in pro sports doesn鈥檛 ultimately boil down to postseason success. It falls flat when the Cardinals try to spin a first-round dud as the sour end to a solid season. The Blues missing the playoffs is a failure in the eyes of their fans. City SC stormed onto the scene last season and, because of that, should play by these same rules.
Welcome to the big show. You鈥檝e earned it ahead of schedule. Embrace it.
Carnell is the coach for seasons to come. That makes him the tone setter in charge of making sure the end of the regular season is now viewed as the start of the most important time of the year. Assuming he can鈥檛 and won鈥檛 learn from last season鈥檚 lone miss could mean underestimating him and his team all over again.
狐狸视频 City SC beat writer Tom Timmermann and co-host Beth O'Malley discuss the team's win over L.A. Galaxy, as well as upcoming pre-season…
City SC coach Bradley Carnell talks with Aziel Jackson, left, and Samuel Adeniran, right, during a training session on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024 at the team鈥檚 practice facility.